Facebook bans InfoWars and Alex Jones after calls for drag queens to be burned alive
Notorious anti-LGBT conspiracy theory outlet InfoWars has been banned from Facebook for violating hate speech rules – after calling for drag queens to be burned alive.
The pro-Trump outlet is best known for outspoken conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who pushes a large number of conspiracy theories to his online following via his InfoWars shows.
Jones’ shows often devolve into hate-filled rants, and on several occasions he has made extremist comments towards people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants.
Facebook today announced that it had removed InfoWars from its platform for repeatedly breaching hate speech rules.
The social media outlet said: “We believe in giving people a voice, but we also want everyone using Facebook to feel safe.
“It’s why we have Community Standards and remove anything that violates them, including hate speech that attacks or dehumanizes others.
“Earlier today, we removed four Pages belonging to Alex Jones for repeatedly posting content over the past several days that breaks those Community Standards.”
The four pages, the Alex Jones Channel Page, the Alex Jones Page, the InfoWars Page and the Infowars Nightly News Page, have been “unpublished for repeated violations of Community Standards and accumulating too many strikes.”
Facebook explained that hate speech was the motivator, adding: “While much of the discussion around Infowars has been related to false news, which is a serious issue that we are working to address by demoting links marked wrong by fact checkers and suggesting additional content, none of the violations that spurred today’s removals were related to this.”
Apple, Google and Spotify have all taken action against InfoWars over the past few weeks over concerns about its extreme content.
On InfoWars in July Jones called for drag queens to be burned alive.
Addressing drag performers on his show, he said: “We’re going to destroy you. You will ascend to Hell in the reverse order.
They now know fear, because we’re coming like the villagers in the night, with the torches burning bright, with fire.
“Fire is not the weapon of evil, fire is the weapon of good, and it will consume you.
“You need to fear god. Your god has stolen your soul.”
He added: “Soon the icy cold of Hell will embrace you forever.
“Soon you will pass through and on, never to return to this dimension, never to ascend, but down, down, down, down, down, down, down into that black hole you’re going, chained.”
Also this month, Jones claimed that Barack Obama was having sex with “ten dudes a day” in one anti-LGBT rant.
The internet host also recently complained that people call him homophobic because he won’t let them have sex with his car.
Jones tore into the “LGBTQ23PCL4 agenda”, claiming kids are being taught to have sex with cars, and that the promotion of sex with cars was now mandatory in the US, Canada and the UK.
He said: “They’re now saying sex with machines or sex with cars or sex with appliances—there’s a whole big movement where people are marrying their cars, marrying their toasters, marrying their dogs, their cats, their horses. I’m not kidding.
“They’re catching people in public places – you see it all the time – trying to have sex with a Ferrari or trying to have sex with a ’57 Chevy.
“They actually – I’m not going to get into the details of what they do, but they lube up the tailpipe and everything and then the police come up and there’s a guy hunching your car.”
He added: “This is the breakdown with society, and if you don’t let somebody have sex with your car, you’re a homophobe, you’re a bigot, you’re a horrible person.
“By the way, this is not satire. I’m not kidding here. This is what they’re teaching kids now.
“We’ve got to start saying, we’re for normal biological behaviour and the future of the human species.”
Donald Trump has appeared on InfoWars in the past, while his close confidant and advisor Roger Stone makes frequent appearances on Jones’ show.
In a disturbing clip in April 2017, Stone completely ignored a vile homophobic rant from a Jones.
Stone, who served as an advisor to the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump, was taking part in a Skype interview with Alex Jones of conspiracy website InfoWars when the incident occurred.
The pair were discussing concerns about Stone’s ties to Russia raised by Rep. Adam Schiff, co-chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence when Jones set off on a rant.
After Stone raised Shiff’s “irresponsible allegations”, Jones seized on the moment to launch into a vile homophobic rant aimed at Schiff, who is in fact married to a woman and has two children.
The conspiracy show host fumed: “I’m not against gay people… but Schiff looks like the archetypal cocksucker with those little deer-in-the-headlight eyes and all his stuff.
“And there’s something about this fairy, hopping around, bossing everybody around, trying to intimidate people like me and you, I want to tell Congressman Schiff and all the rest of them, “Hey listen a**hole, quit saying Roger and I” — and I’ve never used cussing in 22 years but the gloves are off – “listen you son of a b***h, what the f**k’s your problem?
“You want to sit here and say that I’m a goddamn, f**kng Russian. You get in my face with that I’ll beat your goddamn ass, you son of a b***h. You piece of s**t. You f**king goddamn f**ker. Listen f**khead, you have f**king crossed a line. Get that through your goddamn f**king head. Stop pushing your s**t.
“You’re the people that have f**ked this country over and gangraped the shit out of it and lost an election. So stop shooting your mouth off claiming I’m the enemy. You got that you goddamn son of a b***h? Fill your hand.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m done. You start calling me a foreign agent, those are f**king fighting words.”
Stone completely ignored the shocking homophobic rant, waiting for Jones to finish before saying: “I think Adam Schiff has acted irresponsibly and I think he needs to be confronted with his exact words.”